Seema Nayak

Social media is used by fashion retailers to brand awareness, drive fan engagement, and provide merchandise previews to name a few. All of this is to navigate customers to their websites and to increase e-commerce sales.

Keep.com audience is women between 20 and 30 years old. Since Instagram is popular with fashion blogs and live fashion events, Keep.com created a list of most fashionable women. This list included 100 artists, musicians, models, and actresses. From that list of influential women, Keep.com focused on the makeup, jewelry, shoes, and handbags that the celebs were wearing. They then gave customers links to websites where they could buy them.

Rue LA LA is an online fashion retailer for members only. They used Pinterest to create a “Mom’s of Style” campaign. They asked the users to make a board about their mom’s fashion style. The top three winners were featured in a Mother’s Day boutique.

Burberry is a British luxury brand. They used an “Art of the Trench” campaign inviting trench coat aficionados to post images on their Facebook page. The people, influenced by fashion bloggers, voted on their favorite looks. This campaign boosted Burberry’s page to over a million fans. They now rank among the top fashion icons like Ralph Lauren, Kate Spade, and Gucci.

Kate Spade of New York is known around the world for stylish and bold designer clothing, shoes, and fashion accessories. They use Facebook to create brand awareness and to nurture customer relations. They use Twitter to reach fashion lovers and to develop trends. Kate Spade uses Instagram to give their followers a sneak peek into their corporate headquarters. Not surprising, they also use Flickr, Tumblr, and YouTube for promoting photos, and other visual content.

Free People is a bohemian lifestyle brand. They encourage people to upload pictures of themselves wearing clothes and apparel from their fashion line. By utilizing Twitter and Instagram, Free People encourages their users to tag pictures with specific hashtags. Customers receive a card in every shipment with the hashtag information.

While the article features only 5 fashion brands, it is still important to point out that social media plays a major role in all fashion purchases across numerous fashion brands.

Do you know of any retailers using social media the fashionable way? I’m listening. Please share.